1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a card manufacturing method for manufacturing the card and a card manufacturing apparatus for manufacturing the card. In particular, the present invention relates to a manufacturing method of a card having information printed thereon with the use of invisible ink that is not visible by visible light but fluorescent by light having a particular wavelength in order to prevent the card from being tampered or counterfeiting, and a manufacturing apparatus of the card.
2. Description of Related Art
In order to enhance the security of a card, hitherto, a variety of techniques for preventing interpolation and counterfeit of cards have been contemplated for practical use.
It is desired that such technologies is on a variety of cards, for instance, credit card, ID card, certificate card, etc.
As for a card as a personal identifier, it is often the case that the card has a facial portrait of the owner printed thereon. In this view, there is an increasing movement of adopting sublimation ink(s) suitable for photographic printing of high grade together with to a fusible ink suitable for characters in manufacturing the card.
As one technique of the security of a card, there is known an art of printing information (e.g. photo and data) so as to be invisible in a normal state with the use of an invisible ink that becomes visible under light having a given range of wavelength, for example, ultraviolet light although it is invisible under visible light.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 11-321166 discloses an instance of the technique of manufacturing a card with the use of both sublimation ink and invisible ink.
In the above publication, there is described an identification (ID) card having its security enhanced as a result of preventing the card from being tampered or counterfeiting. In detail, the ID card includes a card area having a facial portrait (image) printed with sublimation inks and inherent information printed on the card area with a fluorescent ink visible by irradiation of ultraviolet light (black light).
In manufacturing the card, the above publication discloses to use a sublimation transfer ribbon where sublimation dye layers in yellow (Y), magenta (M), cyan (C) and black (B) are laid on a ribbon base in this order and further, a fluorescent ink and a protecting layer are laid in succession to these sublimation dye layers.